Noel: BRT an example 'survival of the unfittest'

Bus rapid transit is rightly opposed on many grounds. If built, it would likely be obsolete by the time it is completed, and the damage done to London's civic amenities, such as heritage streetscapes, would be irreversible.

By Sid Noel, Special to The London Free Press

Bus rapid transit is rightly opposed on many grounds. If built, it would likely be obsolete by the time it is completed, and the damage done to London’s civic amenities, such as heritage streetscapes, would be irreversible.

But its proposed financing is also highly dubious and deserves further scrutiny.

The BRT business case estimates benefits will total precisely $724.4 million. There are also detailed estimates of everything from future ridership numbers to operating costs to greenhouse gas emission savings of exactly $19.7 million.

Advocates of BRT loudly defend these estimates, claiming they are rock solid and not open to question, while opponents just as loudly respond with point-by-point rebuttals of every claim made by the advocates. So, what are Londoners to make of the BRT business case?

A good place to start is with the track record of other major infrastructure projects, since BRT is unlikely to to be significantly different. The track record of consultants who make estimates like these is not one to inspire faith in the accuracy of their predictions.

Unlike routine infrastructure projects, such as paving a section of road or replacing a water main, where costs are generally estimated correctly, major infrastructure projects like BRT nearly always cost vastly more than originally estimated and their benefits turn out to be substantially less than forecast. Why is this so?

The definitive answer, based on numerous case studies worldwide and a large body of facts, has been provided by Oxford University economist Bent Flyvbjerg, the world’s leading expert on the economics of infrastructure building. His classic study is titled Survival of the Unfittest: Why the Worst Infrastructure Gets Built — And What We Can Do About It.

Among his findings:

Major infrastructure projects are inherently risky because of their long planning horizons and their complex, difficult-to-predict effects on the social, economic and physical environment

They risk being overtaken by unanticipated events (such as, in the case of BRT, the rise of revolutionary new modes of urban transit)

They are subject to early-stage “lock in” or “capture” by promoters and lobbyists, leaving the analysis of alternatives weak or non-existent.

They provide strong, built-in incentives for promoters to draw up business cases that are based on misinformation about costs, benefits and risks.

As a result, cost overruns of 50 per cent are common, and overruns above 100 per cent are by no means rare. There is a similar miscalculation of benefits, where forecasts are later proven to be wrong by between 20 and 70 per cent.

These inaccuracies appear in many cases and over a long time span.

Estimates of transportation infrastructure projects are among the worst. Business cases for projects like BRT often turn out to be based on nothing more than overly optimistic guesstimates.

The main reason for the persistent miscalculation of costs and benefits, Flyvbjerg tells us, is to be found in what psychologists call the “planning fallacy” — that is, the well-proven human tendency to fall prey to “optimism bias” when making plans.

This explain why project promoters and managers are predisposed to base their planning decisions on delusional hopes rather than realistic calculations. Even expert professional engineers and planners succumb, forecasting only the rosiest scenarios of success and glossing over the downside risks.

Political calculations also play a role. Project promoters, consultants, planners and managers all see strategic advantage in underestimating costs and overestimating benefits because that makes their projects more likely to gain approval and funding. Naturally, they see no advantage in providing comparative cost-benefit analyses of other options.

But, as critics have pointed out, potentially better transit options than BRT are not hard to find. For example, Kingston has successfully implemented a transit plan that cost a fraction of what BRT would cost, has increased ridership, does no serious damage to streetscapes, is more compatible with fast-approaching automated transit modes and — unlike BRT — is rapid. But you will never hear any of this from London’s BRT promoters.

Unfortunately, as Flyvbjerg has shown, the more a project’s true costs and benefits are misrepresented, the more likely it is to be built — in other words, it leads to “the survival of the unfittest.”

He recommends several specific things to reverse this process, including more realistic estimating methods and holding consultants professionally accountable for their misrepresentations.

But ultimately the remedy lies in better governance. In London, that would mean electing a council committed to a fair, accurate and openly conducted evaluation of all transit options.

Sid Noel is professor emeritus of political science at Western University.

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